History Main / Railroading

NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom, InsurmountableWaistHighFence, and ButThouMust are VideoGame analogues.

*** And if you refuse Saemon's gift, he will force-give you the silver sword anyway. You can't even abandon it somewhere on the ship. It will be part of your inventory, triggering the next cutscene.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateSiegeOfDragonspear'': all the main story is pretty railroaded into its ForegoneConclusion, but it is a JustifiedTrope, since this is an interquel that necessarily has to reconnect the first game with its sequel. Still, there are many potential interesting sidequests, and different flavor choices for the epilogue in itself.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'': at the end of chapter 1, it doesn't matter what you say, not even if you deny to be the main character: Gaelan will take you to his house and propose the deal (which you '''cannot''' refute: any other dialogue choice then will just loop [[ButThouMust until you finally accept]]). You also generally have no choice but to pursue the BigBad thanks to said deal, either to get revenge/answers or to rescue your childhood friend, you can't simply [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere walk away from Amn and go anywhere else]] forever.
** ''Throne of Bhaal'' even forces you to go through all the trouble involved in the whole story BecauseDestinySaysSo.

** No matter which side you choose in chapter 3, you end up the same way in chapter 4 (but you might get or lose a potential assist NPC for the main task of chapter 6).

** A tongue-in-cheek ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'' article about etiquette at the gaming table notes that when the DM carefully unpacks an adventure called ''Hills of the Hobgoblins'', several hobgoblin minatures, and his personally-compiled dictionary of the hobgoblin language, and asks the players what they want to do, the correct answer is ''not'' "Go to the lowlands and hunt kobolds."

** Some of the universe can be more forceful when it comes to making Loopers follow their stories, but the Webcomic/GirlGenius Loop takes the absolute cake. When [[Fanfic/TheMLPLoops Twilight Sparkle]] Loops into it, she's incapable of going against the story, no matter how hard she tries. And it makes her very angry indeed. By the time she gets to Sturmhalten, she's had enough. By Mechanicsburg, she's gathered together the rest of her universes' Loopers, and has managed to overpower the Loops temporarily. Then she gets hit by a lightning bolt, and dies before she even knows what happened.

** Railroading is also part of safe-mode loops, which are very stable and provide few to no opportunities to deviate from the plot of those worldlines. More often than not, they're used as punishments for loopers who end up causing a crash, since the nature of the loops makes all loopers stir-crazy, and so being forced into a predictable and static role can prove agonizing to most of them. The only loopers who aren't frustrated by the railroading are loopers from realities where their usual conditions are so harsh that they treat safe-mode loops as a much-needed vacation.

* In ''[[Literature/TheScumVillainsSelfSavingSystemRenZhaFanpaiZijiuXitong The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System]]'', Shen Yuan is constantly monitored by a "System" after he gets transmigrated into a webnovel as the protagonist Luo Binghe's teacher Shen Quingqiu that tracks his actions and penalizes him if he acts too OutOfCharacter or fails to make important plot events occur. Most crucially, it makes the penalty for not following the plot event of Shen Quingqiu betraying Luo Binghe so severe that Shen Yuan has no choice but to do it in spite of really, ''really'' not wanting to.

* In ''[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheScumVillainsSelfSavingSystemRenZhaFanpaiZijiuXitong The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System]]'', Shen Yuan is constantly monitored by a "System" after he gets transmigrated into a webnovel as the protagonist Luo Binghe's teacher Shen Quingqiu that tracks his actions and penalizes him if he acts too OutOfCharacter or fails to make important plot events occur. Most crucially, it makes the penalty for not following the plot event of Shen Quingqiu betraying Luo Binghe so severe that Shen Yuan has no choice but to do it in spite of really, ''really'' not wanting to.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'': at the end of chapter 6, it doesn't matter if you kill the Iron Throne leaders or not, it doesn't matter if you accept Koveras' ring or not, nor if you report him to Rieltar: you end up framed anyway.

** The main quest of ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' has this, more so in its later stages. For example, if you give the correct code to [[spoiler: Colonel Autumn after he kidnaps and interrogates you]], you are killed on the spot. More notably, at the end of the main quest, you are forced to [[spoiler: make a HeroicSacrifice... which will likely end up being a StupidSacrifice, as 4 of 8 available companions should be able to do the job for you[[note]]3 of which are immune to radiation, and one who is a slave that does whatever you ask[[/note]]]]. Fortunately, you can avoid the [[spoiler: HeroicSacrifice]] part if you have ''Broken Steel'' installed but the narrator still criticizes the player for it.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' downplays this. At the start of the game, taking the road straight north to Vegas will get you [[BeefGate ripped apart by either Deathclaws or Cazadors]]. You're supposed to go south to Primm, then Nipton, then Novac (incidentally following Benny's trail). Around that point, the game opens up and essentially allows you to go anywhere. However, clever (and borderline suicidal) players have found ways to sneak or simply tank their way straight from Goodsprings to Vegas.

* Ironically, for a game where you're playing a character fighting for freedom, the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' series got progressively more linear in mission structure as the series went on. In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' assassinating Templars must be done in a specific, story-mandated way rather than killing them however you can. Ubisoft seems to have taken the criticism to heart for ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'' which is more open.

## Simply ''telling'' your players "You can't do X, because it would ruin the story."

** The game [[AnAesop deals heavily]] with this subject, and more generally with player decisions/options in video games.

* In Volume 9 of ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', [[spoiler:Team RWBY discovers [[TrappedInAnotherWorld they're in the Ever After]], a world right out of the fairy tale "The Girl Who Fell Through the World". They know that the exit back to their world is the giant tree in the center. But trying to just walk straight there results in you magically looping back around to where you started walking. The Ever After is forcing Team RWBY to interact with each "acre" that makes up the world in a similar sequence of events to those in the fairy tale.]]

* Near the end of the first school year in ''LightNovel/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom'', Catarina hits what seems to be an "event flag" from ''Fortune Lover'', namely a group of girls exposing her crimes of bullying and abusing lower-class students (Maria in particular) in front of the entire student body. At first, she's utterly horrified since this was the beginning of the end for Catarina in the game, but then she's utterly confused because she hasn't actually bullied anybody. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a gigantic coincidence, as the girls were being manipulated by dark magic; thankfully, her friends come in shortly afterwards and dispel the accusations.]]

* In Volume 9 of ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', [[spoiler:Team RWBY discovers [[TrappedInAnotherWorld they're in the Ever After]], a world right out of the fairy tale "The Girl Who Fell Through the World". They know that to exit back to their world is the giant tree in the center. But trying to just walk straight there results in you magically looping back around to where you started walking. The Ever After is forcing Team RWBY to interact with each "acre" that makes up the world in a similar sequence of events to those in the fairy tale.]]